by Noel Hynd
"Who'd want to kill me?" Thomas Daniels finally asked almost rhetorically. He could see Hunter smirk.
"I knew nothing about any of this " "You're blind" said Whiteside.
"Who'd want to kill you? You've been stalked for weeks now." Whiteside's features twisted into a scowl.
"You mean you really don't see it?"
"Leslie," Thomas said, half as a question, half knowing the answer.
"They'll have you under a microscope;' snorted Whiteside.
"They'll examine you from every angle. Find out what you know or whom you might have told. Then when you least expect it, wham!"
Whiteside slapped his palms together for emphasis. A resounding clap filled the room.
"Wham," he said, 'you'll be at your own funeral! I don't believe that you can't see it for yourself."
Thomas's ashen appearance indicated the answer to Whiteside.
No, Thomas didn't see it for himself.
"Women are lethal in games like this" said Whiteside hatefully.
"I suppose she's arranging for a nice hot bed for you at night. Keep you on her side," he said.
"Keep you tired and busy at nights so you can't start thinking. As long as she's got you locked in between her legs, your brains will be on vacation" Thomas looked at the three men who surrounded him. He wanted to stand and attack them, rise up and strike out at them, just as they had struck out at his father and Leslie. But how could he disbelieve them?
"Cute little bird, too" grunted Grover.
"Probably a nice warm one on the mattress, all right. Seems a shame.
But we're going to have to wring that little bird's neck."
Hunter plainly relished the thought.
"There's one other thing" said Thomas, directing his attention back to his tormentor, Whiteside.
"Do tell us."
"The last time I saw you' said Thomas, 'in the churchyard in London, you left me with a suggestion."
Remembering, Whiteside allowed a coy grin to cross his face.
"I told you to give some thought to-" "- to whoever was running Arthur Sandler. If Sandler was a spy, you said, he had to have had a superior."
"That's right' said Whiteside. He let a moment pass as he gathered the proper words.
"I've always known who the superior was.
The question was," he intoned slowly, "whether you knew. Or whether you could find out."
"My father," said Thomas coldly Those two words hung in the air for what, to Thomas Daniels, seemed like an eternity. He felt the six other eyes on him, almost Xraying him. And he recognized now their attitude toward him all along. In their own way, they'd been as perplexed with him as he'd been with them. They'd had his father pegged as a spy, of which sort Thomas still didn't know. But what the men in this room had wondered all along-and probably still wondered, Thomas concluded -was how much the spy father had passed on to the attorney son.
Whiteside finally chipped the silence.
"What you lack in speed, Mr. Daniels' he said, 'you regain in diligence. Of course, the question we now' must ask is the question."
"Sorry?"
"We know," said Whiteside with feline smugness, 'that your father was a spy. A specialist in recruitment, at that. What we must know is, for whom?"
"For whom?" Thomas repeated in perplexed tones. And for whom?"
"Do you speak any Russian, Mr. Daniels?" asked Hunter flatly.
"What?"
"How about the Cyrillic alphabet?" asked Grover.
"Know it?"
"Where would I have learned it?" asked Thomas angrily.
All three men shrugged. Whiteside, his eyes fixed on Daniels, spoke bluntly.
"At your father's knee, perhaps?"
Daniels was shaking his head, failing to comprehend.
"What are you angling at?" he demanded.
"What the hell are you people after?"
Whiteside sighed.
"The extent to which we've been compromised he intoned.
"That's what we want to know. That's what you have to tell us."
"You're not making sense "Oh, no?" Whiteside shot back, the white eyebrows rising quickly.
"Here, then!"
He explained.
Many of the most enterprising intelligence networks of the Second World War, said Whiteside, had been joint Anglo-American endeavors. That was thirty years past, of course, and such past history would hardly have mattered were it not for one simple fact: "A proven network is a proven network' Whiteside pontificated, and good, sound alliances aren't tossed away for the fun of it.
They're kept intact. Sometimes for twenty or thirty years. Even longer."
Thomas listened, uncomfortable under the gaze of Hunter and Grover.
"Do you see the' problem inquired Whiteside.
"Your father was a recruiter. He headed a network. The network functioned through the war, into the postwar period, and was intact at the time of his death " "Intact?" asked Thomas, almost incredulous.
"Yes, intact," said Whiteside intensely, his voice low and serious.
"Intact, but very, very rotten from within. Sandler was no friend of Great Britain, you know that by now. Ergo, he was no friend of the Anglo-American alliance",I follow."
"He was a double, damn it!" Whiteside erupted.
"And we want to know who else was running him. Maybe the Huns themselves recruited him after the war. Maybe our friends the Bolsheviks to the East, or maybe he was a double cross by some moralistic cowboys in Washington. In any event, he wasn't on our side in any way. Yet he was in a network we took part in." Whiteside nodded toward Grover, his own free-lancer. Whiteside drew a breath and concluded.
"We find out who Sandler's ultimate allegiance was to, and we find out how much our postwar networks have been compromised."
"That simple?" asked Daniels, knowing it wasn't.
"Almost," responded Whiteside with equal cynicism.
"Aren't you missing something?"
"What?"
"You're more concerned with finding Sandler's control than with finding Sandler. Why?"
"Last time we spoke," Whiteside reminded him,
"I said there were things I couldn't tell you. Not yet. That answer is one of those things. At the proper time, you'll be informed."
Daniels grimaced.
"And yet Sandler, if you found him, could answer your questions for you."
Whiteside shrugged noncommittally. Thomas frowned.
"Perhaps " Whiteside offered, his gaze squarely upon the younger man before him.
"But someone else, someone in this room, might also be able to answer a key question, something which might tuck it all in place' ' Thomas felt the gaze of the three other men upon him.
"What are you implying? I don't know a damned thing."
Whiteside sighed.
"No," he said,
"I don't think you do. But if you take the question with you from here and examine it, maybe the solution will appear." He paused.
"This is why you're caught up in this, naturally. It's the whole match, for our part. Your father might have said something, anything at one point or another."
"Like what?"
"Like what side he was really on. Like whom he was really controlling Sandler for. And why." Whiteside rubbed his chin in reflection, then hissed his final words with restrained anger.
"Your father headed a network" he declared, 'a damned good network. But whose was it? The Huns'? The Bolsheviks'? The Cowboys'?" Another uneasy pause, then,
"Take your pick, Mr. Daniels.
Because it had to be one of the three!"
Thomas stared at Whiteside for several seconds, weighing the question.
"How could I ever know any more than I know now?" he asked.
"Very simple" scoffed Whiteside.
"Ask the girl. Before she manages to kill you'"
Chapter 30
It was eight thirty in the morning. Jacobus, returning home from a night's work, was as concerned as he was
tired. After all these years in the United States, after obtaining employment in the proper building, after carrying through years of planning without the slightest impediment, there were hints of trouble.
Corescaneu had been stopped by a city policeman, or what appeared to be a city police officer, and made to open his trunk. And then a night later another officer had been prowling around Rota Films on Varick Street.
Jacobus had been given a red light. Nothing new to do until an all-clear signal was given. He slid the key into the door of his home, the upstairs apartment of a two-story house. He slammed the door behind him as he entered. He cursed to himself in Russian, a language he hadn't spoken aloud since his entry into the United States.
Next thing he knew, he cursed, he'd be under surveillance.
He dropped his black metal lunch box in the front hallway and hung up his red-and-black-checked overcoat. He walked into the living room and froze.
He had a visitor, quite uninvited and equally unwelcome. The visitor sat in an armchair in a far corner to his extreme left, the only blind corner in the room. The only place where he wouldn't have seen someone immediately He cursed again to himself. He'd worried about that corner for years. Now every worry was confirmed. The visitor held a small snub-nosed pistol aloft, pointed right at the center of his chest.
"Hello, Sergei. Please don't move."
He glared back.
"Who are you? What do you want?" he asked.
"I have no money. If you wish to rob me-" "Be quiet:' was the command.
"You're an Eastern European.
Hold still. You should like classical music."
A gloved hand went to a radio by the armchair. The radio was turned on and the volume turned up. The music grew louder and, by chance, the crashing end of an orchestral piece neared.
"Firebird Suite. How perfect. I'll bet you're a Stravinsky fan."
Jacobus could read the intruder's intentions. He'd been on the other side of such confrontations in his life. He knew how they worked. He knew also that loud music masks the sound of a pistol.
He wondered if Stravinsky had known that. He wondered if he could jump back and be out the door before the trigger could be pulled.
The sound of drums and cymbals arrived much too quickly. Jacobus whirled and leaped toward the hallway but at the same instant the pistol erupted.
The bullet caught the night custodian in the center of the chest, shattering his breastbone as the shot tumbled upward through the flesh and bone of his body.
The second shot, fired a quarter second after the first, crashed into a rib bone on the left side, traveling into his body straight thereafter and ripping into the right ventricle of the heart. All Jacobus felt was the sudden searing pain in the center of his chest, an intense stabbing sensation, and he understood that he was going to fall.
But the fall itself was experienced only by his body, not by the man who'd inhabited it. His huge frame tumbled against the wall and sprawled over a table and an umbrella stand before rolling onto the floor and landing on its side, one arm outstretched and the other pinned beneath the body.
Gradually the volume of the music was lowered until, as the suite ended seconds later, the radio was turned off. Jacobus, dead before he'd even hit the ground, was motionless, his eyes still open in terror.
The assassin carefully tucked the small pistol into an overcoat pocket.
The body on the floor was inspected gingerly and turned over with a deft toe. The intruder knelt down and delicately felt the wrist for a pulse beat. There was none.
The telephone rang at a few minutes past nine A.m. Thomas was sitting alone in his apartment, submerged in thought.
Whiteside's accusations the suggestions and implications unnerved him.
They challenged the very foundations of truth which Thomas had always accepted: his father's identity. The unswerving, unrelenting patriotism of William Ward Daniels. How could a lifetime of jingoism possibly be questioned?
And yet… Thomas thought. And yet…? The questions wouldn't go away.
Examined from another angle, studied in a different light, William Ward Daniels might have seemed a different man altogether.
And yet it was ridiculous, Thomas concluded. How could a fastidious and dedicated man like Whiteside be so far off Then again, was Whiteside Whiteside? Or was Leslie Leslie?
The bell of the telephone jingled a third time. Thomas answered it and recognized Leslie's voice immediately. It was a voice which he now greeted with both attraction and anxiety, strong feelings pulling in two directions.
"I'm glad you called," he said.
"I filed two motions in probate court for you yesterday. I also filed photocopies of your birth certificate and your parents' marriage license. It's the first step toward-" "Listen to me very carefully," she said.
"It's vital."
"You sound upset."
"Not upset. just concerned."
"What's wrong?"
"The people who are after me" she said.
"They may be very close' His mind drifted back to rural Pennsylvania. The man in the blue car. Grover. Neither of whom she'd face. He received her words with a certain skepticism that remained unspoken.
"Why so suddenly?" he asked.
"There are reasons' she said.
"I can explain. Believe me, Tom, I can explain any questions you have, but not now."
"Why are you calling?" he asked.
"I want you to get out of your apartment immediately," she said.
"This minute. Close it and prepare not to return for several days."
"What are?"
"Just listen to me" she said steadily.
"I'm in a telephone booth.
Neither you nor I have much time."
"Keep talking.
"Leave your apartment and make certain that no one sees you. Go somewhere for the day, places you've never been, places where no one who knows you would look for you. Then tonight you have to meet me "
"Where?"
"Anywhere," she said.
"But it must be someplace deserted. What's the most deserted part of the city after midnight?"
"I suppose Central Park at four A.M.," he said jokingly.
"Perfect."
"What?"
"Perfect,"she reiterated.
"What part?"
"You can't be serious."
"I haven't much time! What part?" Her voice was strident and agitated, as he'd never heard it before. He could hear the sound of traffic behind her, horns and automobile engines. She was indeed in a booth.
"Do you know where the Great Lawn is?"
"I can find it."
"There's a rock formation off the Great Lawn to the east. Between Eighty-third and Eighty-fourth Streets" he said.
"I can be in that area " "I'll find you" she said intensely. A recorded operator's voice sounded on the telephone and he heard her drop another coin into the slot.
"Now do as I've asked. Get out of. your apartment. Prepare not to come back. Don't be seen by anyone you recognize until you see me tonight."
"Can't you tell me what?"
"It's your life I'm talking about" she snapped.
"You can either believe me or you can risk getting killed The choice is yours, Thomas.
Trust me or not. That's all I can say."
"But-' "I have to ring off."
He heard the sound of the receiver being quickly hung up. Then he was hearing a dial tone.
He sat there stunned with the telephone still in his hand. He set it down and looked around the apartment. Trust her or not, he thought to himself If all came down to that. Was she saving his life or luring him to an isolated section of Manhattan where he'd be as easy a murder victim as the unwitting Mark Ryder had been?
He glanced around his cluttered apartment and made his decision.
Shassad stood in the hallway looking down on the body. A photographer from the Medical Examiner's office aimed his camera, flashed a pair of shots, and moved into a di
fferent position.
Detective Jack Grimaldi looked at Shassad from the other end of jacobus's corpse.
"We blew it'" he said.
Shassad looked at him with genuine anger.
"I'd say you blew it, all right" he snapped.
"You've got this guy under surveillance and he gets killed under your fat noses. What the hell are you, cub scouts?"
Grimaldi, looking for a hole to crawl into, said nothing. Nor did his partner, Detective Ed Blocker.
Patrick Hearn approached the area where Shassad stood. Behind Hearn detectives from forensics dusted the room for fingerprints.
"They find anything back there?" asked Shassad.
"Some prints," offered Hearn.
"But they're probably his." He motioned to Jacobus.
"Christ," muttered Shassad. He looked at Grimaldi with contempt.
"Okay," he said, 'run through it again for me. From the top Grimaldi drew a breath and measured each word. He retraced the events of that day.
. Grimaldi and Blocker, working twelve-hour shifts, had replaced the previous team assigned to Jacobus. The assignment had begun at Six A.M. on Thirtieth and Park. Grimaldi and Blocker had then followed Jacobus home by car at eight dc lock that morning, watching their mark disappear in the front door of his second-story home.
Aside from jacobus's murderer, the two detectives had been the last to see the custodian alive. But they had perhaps seen the killer, too.
"We parked out front about a block away," Grimaldi explained.
"We watched the house from there. Then about five minutes later Ed went around back."
"Back where?" Shassad asked.
Detective Edward Blocker replied.
"There's a patio behind these row houses" he said.
"It's visible from the side street. I took a stroll down the side street and took a look. I saw a girl."
"Girl?"
"Yes, sir," said Blocker.
"I think it was the girl Shassad looked at him coldly. qaal girl" "The one we chased out of the Garden that night," he said.
"The one at the hockey game. The one we lost in the parking garage."
"Where the hell was she?" demanded Shassad. Hearn leaned on the hallway wall and studiously looked into the vacant eyes of the corpse.
He listened intently and was completely expressionless.
"She was coming down the back staircase from jacobus's apartment" said Blocker.